Chris Cardell Media

One of the first strategies I recommend to everyone I come into contact with is to start building a list they can begin emailing to. This usually demands a fundamental change in their initial approach to their prospects, clients, and customers.

The aim is to begin the relationship by giving – and then to maximise profits by email-marketing to them, realising our profits over time. This is in direct contrast with the traditional strategy whereby the aim is simply to make a sale right off the bat.

The question now is how do we make best use of our email list, other than simply mailing them more often (which is obvious, but still worth mentioning because it’s virtually certain you aren’t emailing YOUR list often enough).

The key is segmentation. It’s actually easier and more straightforward than it seems, but it does demand you do a little bit more work than simply writing emails and sending them.

When you send an offer to your list you’ll come to know in advance approximately what kind of response you’re going to get. That’s the whole point of doing direct response marketing in the first place.

But what’s not immediately obvious is the 80/20 rule is going to apply: over time you’re going to find the same names keep cropping up, responding to your offers.

Roughly 80% of your sales are going to come from just 20% of your list. What’s more you’re going to find a percentage of these 20% are going to be hyper-responders; that is, they’ll buy the de-luxe version of everything you sell, every time you ask.

This point is crucial: because it’s like they’re waiting to give you money but won’t do it unless you ask them to!

So your first job is to identify these people. It’s not hard and there are several ways you can do it:

Manually tick off names against shipped orders. Only really feasible for small numbers and physically-shipped items.

Use spreadsheets and do some fancy work with data sorting. This is often going to be the easiest way to do it in the short term.

Use the facilities in your email autoresponder to track clicks within the messages. This is useful when it works, but be aware the presence of these links themselves can themselves affect response. So test (as always!).

Now, assuming you have the data, what you’re looking for are those top 20% and the real cream, those incredibly profitable hyper-responders.

Once you’ve identified them, you put them into a new email list, one which you keep exclusively for these highly-profitable names, and then start marketing to it with specially designed high-price offers exclusive to that group only.

What’s more, you should tell them they’re in this special group, and why. People love to belong, and once you’ve given them an elevated status, most of them will work to keep it – by giving you even more money.

By doing this you’ll not only make maximum profits, but you’ll also gather around you a loyal group of raving “fans”.

In the last couple of years, there’s been an explosion of information sharing on the web known as social media or social marketing. You’ve probably used, or at least heard of; Youtube, Facebook, MySpace, Stumbleupon, Digg, Twitter and so on. These are tools that teenagers use effortlessly, but they are also powerful marketing strategies that every Business should be using to build a brand and attract new customers online.

All these social web terms fall under the umbrella of ‘Web 2.0’, a term coined in 2004 to describe the new generation of the internet and how people would use it to communicate in a fashion that was immediate and powerful. It has revolutionised the web and forever changed how we communicate online.

Because the list of Social Media tools is long and evergrowing and the strategies are so many and varied, I would rather have you select a few of the key elements and test each one, until you get the results you want. When you’re ready to expand your ‘business socialising’, there are plenty of other tools you can try.

Key Elements to Using Social Media to Promote your Business:

1. Write articles about your products and services and promote them on sites like Hubpages, Scribd, ezinearticles. Make sure you always have a clickable link that sends viewers back to your site.
2. Create podcasts and/or videos and put them on Youtube, bliptv, podcast directories which link to your site.
3. ‘Bookmark’ your content on sites like Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Technorati. Encourage other readers to also bookmark your content and spread the word.
4. Help customers connect to your various networks. Install a widget like lijit.com
5. Open accounts with Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace and Twitter and cross-promote your content. Don’t make the mistake of thinking this only applies to people with ‘sexy’ businesses. Business is about people. That’s the power of social media
6. Start a community group on Myspace or Facebook and encourage readers to join and interact.
7. Turn your blog or site into a mobile version. Try Mofuse.com for Free
8. Turn your press release into a Social Media Friendly one. Include hyperlinks to RSS feeds, podcasts, videos etc.
9. Join social networks and forums in your business niche. Participate in discussions and include your website link in your signature file.
10. Add a forum to your website and encourage customers to join in and give you feedback on your products and services.
11. Remember that Social Media is about being sociable. Contribute to social networks, become part of the blogging community and integrate these tools to build a better brand and following.